Golf club is suspect in unsolved Poinsettia fire

The Poinsettia Fire burned homes and an apartment complex in Carlsbad as it spread to more than 100 acres. The Omni La Costa Resort and Spa's golf course is at the upper right.
— K.C. Alfred / U-T San Diego

The Poinsettia Fire burned homes and an apartment complex in Carlsbad as it spread to more than 100 acres. The Omni La Costa Resort and Spa's golf course is at the upper right.
— K.C. Alfred / U-T San Diego

The Carlsbad Fire Department has classified the cause of the fire, which flared up on the northern edge of the Omni La Costa Resort and Spa’s golf course, as “undetermined.”

Despite the open-ended formal finding, the department report narrows down the disaster’s conceivable causes while directing some deductive heat at a group of golfers who played through the ignition area “several minutes” before the wildfire was first observed.

According to eyewitnesses, the Poinsettia fire began near a cart path on the 7th hole.

The blaze quickly jumped Poinsettia Lane and roared toward the coast on a day when fiery hell was breaking loose all around San Diego County.

In his report, Dominic Fieri, an investigator with the Carlsbad Fire Department, dismissed all “natural” causes for the fire.

After “crawling around on hands and knees,” Fieri ruled out lightning or a mulch pile bursting into flame.

The course’s irrigation system, the only immediate source of electricity, showed no evidence of having kick-started a fire.

As for arson, a viral suspicion on that infernal spring day, Fieri found no evidence of an incendiary device.

“Based on the location of the fire’s origin, and interviews conducted by the Carlsbad police,” he wrote, “I have ruled out any fire causes that resulted in a deliberate act of circumstances in which a person ignited the fire.”

That leaves Fieri with only one explanation he could not reject out of hand — a “smoldering ignition source that had direct contact with combustible materials.”

Given the starting point on a golf course, Fieri concluded that the blaze may have been started either by a burning cigarette or cigar (though he could find no physical evidence in the windy, charred ignition area) or a spark created by a “titanium golf club head” hitting a rock.

Don’t laugh.

Two wildfires in Orange County have been linked to players hitting out of rocky lies with dry vegetation nearby.

James Earthman, a chemical engineering and materials science professor at UC Irvine, confirmed in a study that clubs containing titanium can produce sparks of up to 3,000 degrees that will burn for more than a second.

“And that gives the spark plenty of time” to ignite dry terrain,” he told reporters in March. “Titanium reacts violently with both oxygen and nitrogen in the air.”

In what reads like a joke at a well-watered 19th hole, Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Steve Concialdi has given his personal permission to OC golfers playing with titanium clubs to improve their lies in the rough if it’s rocky underneath.